Sports

OKC’s Mark Daigneault knows what it takes to win championships. His wife has won a ton of them

Oklahoma City’s Mark Daigneault has the best record of any coach in the NBA this season. And he has the second-best record of any coach in his house. Daigneault is a coach, and a coach’s husband, too. His wife is Oklahoma assistant women’s gymnastics coach Ashley Kerr. She and the Sooners went 33-2 this season and won another national championship, their third in the last four years. So, as Daigneault chases his first NBA title, his wife has now been part of seven national championships over her career on the staffs at Florida and Oklahoma.

Pacers’ 25-year Finals drought is over. Now they’re looking to overcome their snake-bitten history

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Tyrese Haliburton and Myles Turner beamed as they carried the Indiana Pacers shiny, new Eastern Conference championship trophy into their postgame news conferences Saturday night. Pascal Siakam needed help because he was also bringing the series MVP trophy. The Pacers have finally ended their 25-year NBA Finals drought. They enjoyed it with a fitting celebration for the team that plays in a state where basketball is treated like religion. These Pacers have managed to achieve the unthinkable after starting 10-15 and looking less like anything but a title contender. But now Indiana will try to exorcise the demons of its decades-long snake-bitten history when the Pacers take on the Oklahoma City .

French Open: Coco Gauff reaches quarterfinals and jokes with Frances Tiafoe about forgetting rackets

PARIS (AP) — Coco Gauff has earned her fifth consecutive trip to the French Open quarterfinals with a straight-set victory but still is catching flak because she forgot to bring her rackets to an earlier match. The No. 2-seeded Gauff has been engaging in a bit of back-and-forth with another American and Roland-Garros quarterfinalist, Frances Tiafoe, over the equipment blunder. Gauff won the 2023 U.S. Open and was the runner-up in Paris in 2022. She beat No. 20 Ekaterina Alexandrova 6-0, 7-5 on Monday. Tiafoe teasingly called the 21-year-old Gauff “Mrs. Mature.”

French Open: No. 1 Jannik Sinner dominates Andrey Rublev to reach the quarterfinals

PARIS (AP) — Top-ranked Jannik Sinner’s latest dominant performance at the French Open is a 6-1, 6-3, 6-4 victory over No. 17 Andrey Rublev. The result on Monday night put Sinner back in the quarterfinals in Paris and extended his Grand Slam winning streak to 18 matches. Sinner won the U.S. Open last September and the Australian Open this January. Now he’ll try to get to the semifinals at Roland-Garros for the second consecutive year and faces 62nd-ranked Alexander Bublik on Wednesday. Sinner hasn’t lost a set through the fourth round and has dropped just 30 games.

Surprise! NHL, with the help of kids, gives Barkov the Selke and King Clancy awards

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Florida’s Aleksander Barkov thought the team meeting was over. He found it odd that the Panthers hadn’t been told they could leave. Turns out, there was a good reason. Two of them, actually. The Panthers hadn’t had an opportunity to spend any time at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital during their playoff run, so the team decided to bring some of the patients into the team facility for a visit instead. And the kids came bearing gifts for Barkov: the Selke Trophy as the league’s top defensive forward, and the King Clancy trophy for leadership and humanitarian work.

French Open: 361st-ranked Frenchwoman Boisson upsets No. 3 Pegula. Gauff, Djokovic and Sinner win

PARIS (AP) — Loïs Boisson had never even played at the French Open before, let alone on the biggest court at Roland-Garros. Now the 361st-ranked Frenchwoman is in the quarterfinals after beating No. 3 Jessica Pegula of the United States 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 in the fourth round. Quite some victory, considering Pegula was the U.S. Open runner-up last year. Boisson won on her first match point with a forehand winner. She joined second-seeded Coco Gauff, No. 6 Mirra Andreeva and No. 7 Madison Keys in the women’s quarterfinals. No. 3 Alexander Zverev, last year’s runner-up in the men’s tournament, also reached the last eight.

NASCAR’s new $1M In-season Challenge starts with drivers focused more on winning races

LEBANON, Tenn. (AP) — Bubba Wallace sees NASCAR as having all the momentum possible right now with different media partners. Perfect timing then for NASCAR’s In-season Challenge to debut, right? Well, Wallace forgot that was about to debut even as he thinks this will be a way to get fans even more invested. Kyle Larson also didn’t realize NASCAR’s new in-season competition had its field set after the Cup Series race at the Nashville Superspeedway. Larson said he hadn’t seen any promotion of the competition. NASCAR announced this new in-season competition in May 2024. The next three races will seed 32 drivers for the competition starting at Atlanta on June 28.

Jacpot! The Royals call up top prospect Jac Caglianone in the hopes of jump-starting their offense

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Kansas City Royals have called up top prospect Jac Caglianone, and he could make his big league debut on Tuesday night in St. Louis. They announced the move on Monday, one day after a second straight 1-0 game against Detroit. Kansas City has hit the fewest homers and scored the second-fewest runs in baseball, and the Royals hope that Caglianone can help to jump-start that anemic offense. In 50 games between Double-A and Triple-A this season, Caglianone has hit 15 homers and 56 RBIs with a .322 batting average. He was the sixth overall pick in last year’s first-year player draft.

Houston Astros look vulnerable in the AL West. Is anyone ready to dethrone them?

If it weren’t for Oakland’s division title in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Houston would have a streak of seven straight AL West championships. Only the Braves, Dodgers and Yankees have had runs that long since divisional play began. But last year, the Astros won just 88 games. That was their fewest in a full season since 2016. Only the mediocrity of the rest of the division kept them on top. This year, Houston is 32-27. That puts the Astros on pace to win 88 games again. The question is whether anyone else in the division has what it takes to force a changing of the guard.

Novak Djokovic earns his 100th career French Open victory by overwhelming Cam Norrie

PARIS (AP) — Novak Djokovic has earned his 100th career French Open victory by overwhelming Cam Norrie 6-2, 6-3, 6-2 in the fourth round. Only Rafael Nadal has earned more wins in Paris, with 112. Djokovic hasn’t ceded a set on his way to the quarterfinals this year at Roland-Garros, where he has won three of his 24 Grand Slam titles. With Monday’s win over Norrie never in doubt, Djokovic moves into a matchup against No. 3 seed Alexander Zverev on Wednesday for a berth in the semifinals.